Jihadist Violence: the Indian Threat - 5: An Examination Of A Terrorist Group, A Loosely Organized Indigenous Islamist Militant Network Known As The Indian Mujahideen
By Stephen Tankel
Phase 4
The information gleaned from the Batla House encounter dealt a serious blow to IM networks, scattering members and assets, and leading to a wave of arrests that included Mohammed Sadique Israr Sheikh.189 Key IM leaders, including the Shahbandri brothers, fled to Pakistan. Some travelled there through Bangladesh, others by way of Nepal. The wave of arrests and forced migrations threw the IM into disarray and contributed to an almost two-year pause in attacks. According to Siddi Bapa, who became the IM’s on-the-ground commander after the Shahbandri brothers fled and Sadique Sheikh was arrested; this made regenerating the network difficult.
In November 2008, two months after the Batla House encounter, ten Pakistani LeT gunmen rampaged through Mumbai, striking two luxury hotels, a café popular with foreign tourists, one of the country’s busiest railway stations, and a Jewish community centre. One hundred and sixty-six people were killed in what was one of the most successful terrorist spectaculars since 9/11. The attacks garnered worldwide media attention and derailed a fragile peace process between India and Pakistan. LeT came under heavy pressure from the Pakistan Army and ISI to lie low following the Mumbai attacks. According to David Headley, it was not until almost a year later that the group was cleared to execute another attack.
In the meantime, Bangladesh, historically a major staging and transit point for Indian and Pakistani militants, became an increasingly difficult operating area.195 Bangladeshi authorities began cracking down on domestic jihadists, including HuJI-B, after 2005 when some of them launched a series of bomb blasts across the country. In 2008, the Awami League won a landslide election in which it campaigned on closer ties with India and the promise of a more thorough crackdown on Islamist militancy. Meanwhile, New Delhi was reaching out to improve relations with Dhaka, and ratcheted up the pressure on its weaker neighbour after Mumbai. The United
Case Studies In Confusion:
2006 And 2008 Serial Blasts
The 2006 Mumbai and 2008 Bangalore serial blasts capture the complex and sometimes confounding nature of the jihadist scene in India. On July 7, 2006, militants bombed seven commuter trains running on Mumbai’s suburban railway. The explosions occurred over the course of approximately ten minutes and killed more than two hundred people, making it the second deadliest terrorist attack in India’s history after the 1993 blasts executed by Dawood Ibrahim. Charge sheets, official dossiers, and media and investigative reports differ widely from one another, naming a raft of different planners, coordinators, triggermen, and supporters from IM, LeT, and SIMI.
It remains unclear at the time of writing precisely who engineered the 2006 Mumbai blasts and what role the IM and LeT each played. After his arrest, Indian Mujahideen commander Sadique Sheikh told investigators the Atif Ameen-led Azamgarh module was responsible for the Mumbai blasts. Shahzad Ahmed, an IM operative who escaped during the Batla House encounter but was later arrested, corroborated Sadique Sheikh’s confession. An official dossier about the IM concurs, adding that Riyaz Shabandri is alleged to have delivered the RDX. Yet it also suggests the bombing may have been carried out at the direction of Pakistan-based actors. Two LeT operatives who have since been arrested confessed separately to the U.S. authorities and the Indian authorities that the group worked with the Indian militants responsible for the blasts.
Acknowledging the opacity of the attacks, it might be best to think of them as conceived and possibly supported by LeT, but executed by indigenous militants on which the group chose (or felt compelled) to rely. Confusion has also surrounded the Indian Mujahideen’s role in the 2008 serial blasts in Bangalore. Some analysts attribute them to the IM’s southern brigade, but evidence suggests that the bombings were carried out by a quasi-independent LeT supported-cum-instructed outfit called Jamiat-ul-Ansarul Muslimeen (JIAM) that also benefited from ad hoc IM assistance. T. Naseer, a would-be militant from Kerala, inspired by Abdul Nasser Mahdani, a cleric who led the Kerala-based Peoples Democratic Party, led JIAM and allegedly devised the plot. Sarfaraz Nawaz, a former SIMI member also from Kerala who immigrated to Oman, claims he was inspired to become involved in militancy by Naseer during a visit home in 2006. Once back in Oman, he linked up with LeT.
In 2008, Naseer approached Nawaz about securing funding for simultaneous bombings in Chennai and Bangalore. Nawaz connected him with LeT’s commander for the Indian Ocean rim, Rashid Abdullah (aka Wali), who was interested in using Naseer to recruit for training in Kashmir. Abdullah agreed to provide money and guidance for an attack first, but suggested limiting the operation to Bangalore because a simultaneous operation required extensive planning, logistical support, and a larger cell. He appears to have viewed this as a low-cost enterprise with a potentially high return, but sought to limit the damage in the event something went wrong.182 Abdullah provided advice for Naseer, via Nawaz, including that he not participate directly, that he leave Bangalore before the operation, and that he use as few men as possible.
However, the guidance proffered did not include comprehensive instruction on how to build a bomb. Nor did anyone in JIAM actually receive explosive material. Instead, Naseer and several others broke into a store and stole 250 kilograms of ammonium nitrate, forty detonators, and gelatine sticks. JIAM was not part of the Indian Mujahideen network, but several of its members had ties to those who were. Naseer admits to meeting Riyaz, who, he claims, “asked me if I could spare some boys for Jihadi work but I refused to send anyone, as my boys were busy.” The IM leader allegedly enlisted Abdul Sattar, an experienced bomb-maker previously associated with LeT to prepare forty improvised explosive devices, fifteen of which were used for the Bangalore blasts. When considering this assistance, however, it is important to note that Sattar was an independent operator whose son was part of Naseer’s cell. Thus it is questionable whether this really amounts to IM assistance.
Of the fifteen IED’s made, most failed to detonate due to poor fabrication and faulty timers.187 only one person was killed. T. Naseer escaped to Bangladesh, where LeT and HuJI-B members helped him hide out, but the authorities ultimately caught up with him.188 Nawaz was arrested too. The information gleaned from these and other arrests provided important insights into the intricate networks at the heart of the Indian jihadist movement as well as the way in which larger entities can leverage and empower smaller ones like JIAM.46 Stephen Tankel States joined India and put significant pressure on Bangladesh to take action against LeT, while also offering it valuable military and counterterrorism assistance to do so. In short, Mumbai catalyzed a crackdown and, with HuJI-B members arrested or deep underground, Bangladesh counterterrorism efforts expanded to include LeT. According to multiple Indian, U.S., and Bangladeshi officials, those not arrested, pushed across the border into India or forced underground fled the country. These gains remain reversible, but in the short-term made Bangladesh less hospitable terrain for militancy.
As Bangladesh became a more difficult operating environment, concerns grew that Nepal’s importance as a transit point for militants executing terrorist attacks in India would increase. A serious lack of governance exists in Nepal, which shares a border with India that can be crossed with little trouble for the right price. It historically had been a transit and logistical base and continues to be. However, little evidence suggests that it has elevated to the degree feared after Bangladesh became less hospitable to LeT. On the other hand, the Gulf remains an important and sometimes underappreciated support base and transit point for Pakistani and Indian militants looking to launch attacks against India.198 Several captured operatives confirmed ISI facilitation for Indian militants based in or transiting through Gulf countries.199 This included the Shahbandri brothers, who allegedly shuttled back and forth from Pakistan to Sharjah in the UAE before ultimately settling in Karachi.
Beyond Batla House Pakistan’s provision of safe haven to Indian operatives on the run has been a key component of its support. The ability to find safe haven in Pakistan and to travel from there to the Gulf, specifically Saudi Arabia and the UAE, enabled IM leaders to regroup and rebuild their networks. With Atif Ameen dead and Mohammad Sadique Israr Sheikh in prison, Ahmad Siddi Bapa emerged as the on-the-ground commander in India. He took control of the Pune module and built another, alternatively called the Bihar or Darbhanga module.201 One Jihadist Violence: The Indian Threat 47 captured perative told his interrogators the Shahbandri brothers were training recruits from south India in Pakistan, though it is unclear whether this information is accurate and, if so, whether they fed into the Pune module on returning.
Scattered reports indicate the Bihar module included youth previously uninvolved in militancy or at least not wanted by the authorities for such activities and drew heavily from the district of Darbhanga (in Bihar) near the Nepalese border.203 The Pune and Bihar modules are believed to be the two IM entities responsible for attacks since the network resumed its terrorist campaign.
The first attack during this phase took place on February 13, 2010, when a battery-operated bomb consisting of RDX, ammonium nitrate, and petroleum hydrocarbon oil with ball bearings detonated inside Pune’s German Bakery, killing seventeen and injuring scores more. Siddi Bapa was captured on closed-circuit television, walking into the German Bakery, a popular destination with foreigners, carrying a backpack containing the bomb.205 Both the Delhi Police Special Cell and Bangalore Police alleged an Indian militant named Qateel Siddiqui collaborated with Siddi Bapa.206 Siddi Bapa reportedly confirmed this to NIA investigators, telling them that Siddiqui was intended to have executed a simultaneous bombing at the Dagdusheth Ganesh temple, also in Pune, but failed in his attempt.
Siddiqui was killed in prison under suspicious circumstances in June 2012.Siddi Bapa’s arrest and alleged statements to interrogators have called into question previous understandings of who executed the attack. Himayat Baig was arrested in October 2010 along with Lalbaba Farid (aka Bilal). Farid, who is on trial in India, allegedly trained in Pakistan and performed reconnaissance for LeT. He may have reported to Syed Zabiuddin Ansari (aka Abu Jundal), the Indian LeT operative who fled following the Aurangabad arms haul and was in the control room in Karachi for the 2008 Mumbai attacks. The Maharashtra antiterrorism squad alleged that Siddi Bapa and Baig executed the Pune bombing for which LeT’s commander Rashid Abdullah was suspected of supplying the military-grade RDX.
Baigwas convicted for his role in the 2010 Pune blast and sentenced to death. He continues to proclaim his innocence and was appealing his conviction at the time of writing. Siddi Bapa’s confession may have strengthened his case. The questions over complicity for the German Bakery bombing are notable for several reasons. First, they highlight the ongoing tendency in India to make hasty arrests and then claim an investigation is complete, only to have new information surface and additional arrests follow. The introduction of potentially extraneous pieces can make putting together an already difficult puzzle all the more challenging.
Second, some of the confusion may stem from the fact that multiple plots were being developed against targets in Pune and the surrounding areas at the time. Following his deportation from Saudi Arabia, Ansari told the Delhi police that LeT was planning an attack against a police academy in Nashik, near Pune. Third, recent reports indicate the possibility of al-Qaeda involvement in the plot. David Headley, who remained a LeT operative but began freelancing after the 2008 Mumbai attacks, told investigators that he performed reconnaissance on other targets in Pune for Ilyas Kashmiri who lead the 313 Brigade and became al-Qaeda’s chief of operations in Pakistan.
Kashmiri sent an e-mail to a Pakistani journalist in which he did not directly claim credit for the attack, but implied the 313 Brigade’s involvement. Al-Qaeda’s number three at the time, Sheikh Sai’d al-Masri, went further and claimed credit in an audio statement for the bombing on Kashmiri’s behalf. According to a U.S. indictment, the Federal Bureau of Investigation asserted that Kashmiri “was in regular contact with al-Qaeda and in particular with Mustafa Abu al Yazid, a.k.a. ‘Sheik Said al Masri’.”
Little hard evidence in the open source supports al-Qaeda’s claim. However, based on Siddi Bapa’s interrogation, two of India’s most well-respected journalists reported that the German Bakery blast was “partial fallout of an earlier order to bomb and attack places frequented by foreigners, including Israelis.” Notably, the German Bakery was close to a local Chabad house, which was among the targets David Headley surveyed.
However, whereas the Pune attack was almost guaranteed to kill foreigners, the attacks that followed fit the IM’s traditional target profile. In April 2010, low-intensity IEDs were detonated at entrance gates of the Chinnaswamy Cricket Stadium in Bangalore. Fifteen people were injured, but none died. Once again, Indian Mujahideen members, including Siddi Bapa and Mohamed Qateel Siddiqui, are believed to have collaborated with a LeT operative (Fasih Mahmood, now in custody). The network attempted another attack in September on the two-year anniversary of the Batla House encounter. Two gunmen opened fire on a tourist bus near the Jama Masjid in Delhi. No one was killed and the ammonium nitrate bomb intended to explode nearby failed to detonate.219 several of them are alleged to have been involved in the Chinnaswamy Stadium blasts as well.
Mansoor Peerbhoy, who led the Media Group, was arrested before the IM resumed its bombing campaign and no claim of credit was issued for the German Bakery or Chinnaswamy Stadium blasts. On December 7, 2010, a bomb exploded at the Sheetla Ghat in Varanasi. It is adjacent to the main Dashashwamedh Ghat, where the IM launched its first attack. An e-mail purportedly sent to several media houses after the blast with the subject line of “Let’s feel the pain together,” claimed, “Indian Mujahideen attribute this attack to December 6 . . . the loss of their beloved Babri Masjid.” It was signed Al-Arbi, the signature used on previous IM e-mails. The content indicates the attack was intended to take place a day earlier, which would have coincided with the anniversary of the mosque’s demolition. The delay might owe to heightened security, which could have made executing the blast difficult on December 6. An IM member is believed to have hacked into an unsecured Wi-Fi connection registered to an innocent individual.223 although most interlocutors with whom the author spoke concurred that this was an IM attack, several also noted the unsophisticated nature of the e-mail’s content when compared with the glossy manifestos coming out in 2008.
This might owe to Peerbhoy’s arrest and an increasingly difficult operating environment. However, they also speculated that it is not difficult for anyone with rudimentary computer knowledge to send a claim signed Al-Arbi, Riyaz Shahbandri’s nom de guerre, after a bombing. This makes assigning blame for attacks more difficult and can create additional uncertainty for investigators. In May 2011, the IM perpetrated a low-intensity bombing outside the Delhi High Court that yielded minimal casualties and no fatalities.
Seven months later, a briefcase bomb exploded near the same site, killing fifteen people. The September 2011 Delhi High Court blast illustrates the continued variegation of the Indian jihadist movement and the manner in which e-mail claims of responsibility can promote confusion over culpability. After the bombing, several media organizations received an e-mail allegedly from HuJI that read: We owe the responsibility of today’s blasts at high court Delhi..... our demand is that Afzal Guru’s death sentence should be repealed immediately else we would target major high courts & THE SUPREME COURT OF [sic passim] A second claim of responsibility followed, this one from the Indian Mujahideen.
Yet India’s National Investigative Agency believes that neither HuJI nor the IM was responsible. Instead, its investigators alleged that two teenagers sent the initial e-mail attributed to HuJI on behalf of their associate Wasim Ahmed Malik.A medical student in Bangladesh who grew up in Indian-administered Kashmir, Malik reportedly idolized Afzal Guru, a doctor also from Kashmir who was on death row for his role in the December 2001 Indian Parliament attack (Guru was executed in 2013). Malik was briefly tangled up with JeM militants at the age of fifteen but neverprosecuted, and his parents sent him to Bangladesh to keep him out Jihadist Violence: The Indian Threat 51 of trouble. Instead, India’s National Investigative Agency claims an Islamist student activist on campus, coupled with access to jihadist material on the Internet, further radicalized Malik. He allegedly decided to bomb the Delhi High Court as a way of protesting Guru’s conviction and enlisted the help of his brother who had joined a Hizb ul-Mujahideen unit in Kashmir, but quickly grew disillusioned at its inactivity. For assistance, they turned to Ghulam Sarwar, a Pakistani LeT operative who was living under a false identity there.
The NIA has alleged Sarwar built the bomb that killed fifteen people and may have helped plant it. According to one journalist who covered the story closely, Sarwar’s name is not on any flight anifest. Thus, unless he was traveling under another assumed identify, he would have traveled to Delhi via rail or road and likely required a safe house in which to overnight.Greater certainty exists regarding the IM’s responsibility for three simultaneous bombings in Mumbai on July 13, 2011, but again questions persist about the involvement of foreign militants. Within ten minutes of one another, a bomb-laden motorcycle at the Opera House, a meter box at Zaveri Bazaar, and a car bomb by the bus stop at Dadar West exploded. The three bombs contained ammonium nitrate amounts varying between 200 grams and 1 kilogram per bomb.232 This was the most calculated and organized attack tooccur since the Batla House encounter. Twenty-six people were killed and approximately 130 others were injured.
The head of the Maharashtra antiterrorism squad claims to have evidence that Riyaz Shahbandri planned the attacks from Saudi Arabia, where he met with others involved. He and Siddi Bapa are named in the 4,700-page charge sheet filed as having planned, funded, and provided explosives.According to the NIA, which was questioning Siddi Bapa at the time of writing, the IM field commander told them that a Pakistani national called Waqas with bomb-making expertise planned one of the three explosive devises. The field commander alleges that he was roped in specifically for the operation, is currently in hiding, and reported directly to handlers in Pakistan.
More than a year passed before another attack attributed to theIndian Mujahideen occurred. The serial blasts in Pune on August 1, 2012, were a failure. One person was injured, none were killed, and several suspected IM members were arrested. Seven months later saw more success: two bicycle bombs in downtown Hyderabad killed seventeen and injured more than a hundred. As with the 2011 Mumbai blasts and the 2012 Pune bombing, no claim of credit was forthcoming. An IM operative already in Delhi police custody allegedly admitted to having conducted reconnaissance, in the previous year, of the area where the blasts occurred.
Siddi Bapa’s arrest raises questions about the future of the IM network and especially the Bihar module. The authorities claim to have successfully degraded the Pune module in 2012 and 2013. It activated around 2007 but remained quiescent relative to the Azamgarh module and only increased its operational tempo after the authorities eviscerated the module. As this report was being finalized, some media suggested that Siddi Bapa was working on building another module in Kolkata. Siddi Bapa also allegedly told NIA interrogators that he and some of his men were working on a plot to take “foreign Jews” hostage at the time of his arrest. He claims to have received orders to take Jewish hostages sometime after executing the 2013 Hyderabad bombings. Although unclear at the time of writing, the speculation is that this was part of a plot to negotiate the release of imprisoned militants.241 Siddi Bapa’s arrest will undoubtedly throw sand into the gears. It is unlikely to spell the end of the Indian jihadist movement, which will continue to evolve in possibly unpredictable ways.
As this report was going to press, multiple media reports were also speculating about factionalism among Pakistan-based IM leaders and the possibility that some of them were seeking to build a relationship with al-Qaeda. Two journalist accounts informed by statements Siddi Bapa allegedly made to interrogators assert that in March 2013 a senior Pakistan-based IM member, Mirza Shadab Beg, wanted to “join hands with the al Qaeda for ‘joint operations’ in India.” He, possibly along with Riyaz Shahbandri, allegedly held talks with one of al-Qaeda’s senior members. Reporting about a potential association Jihadist Violence: The Indian Threat 53between the IM and al-Qaeda should be treated with significant caution.
Source: http://www.wilsoncenter.org/publication/jihadist-violence-the-indian-threat
URL: https://newageislam.com/islam-terrorism-jihad/jihadist-violence-indian-threat-5/d/35258